Data from: ‘Keep the line moving’: residual system state potential as a baseball hitting-style indicator

The sport of baseball has a strong tradition of utilizing
forward-projecting probabilistic measures, such as batting average, for
performance assessment. Albeit highly informative and quite accurate, such
measure of batting probability merely looks at how a player can
probabilistically act upon the system in a forward manner, based on how
they have acted upon that system in the past, but does not provide
information about the state of the system itself once a player completes
an at-bat. The current paper proposes a statistic called the Residual Run
Potential Index (RRPI) as a measure of the ‘residual system state’ as it
remains after a completed at bat. Derived from Retrosheet (2017) event
data, the RRPI reflects a system-efficiency measure of player hitting
style that retains maximized runscoring potential of the system state.
RRPI calculations derived from a proprietary software simulation
experiment, as well as for several Major League Baseball (MLB)
Hall-of-Fame players, are also presented.